A Wake-Up Call!So, where are we now?At one time, we teachers thought just having hypertext links in our documents was "cool". We could link our pages with university research, original source documents or just other places to find information. Even better, it meant we could structure our text so that it could be read in any order, that there could be multiple routes through the same set of data, that different qualities of information could be harvested by readers choosing one route over another. Even more clever, we stopped putting clues, like "click here" within our text, allowing readers to judge whether they required additional information offered on specific topics. At the same time, we were also linking to pictures, sounds, music, animations. Anything to add a bit of extra interest to our presentations. Eventually, we even learned that good taste involved restraint... But, one thought kept nagging at me... Was it really interactive? I had to admit, it wasn't. And then, slowly but surely, I began to notice things that weren't just static text on a page. I began to dabble in some of the arcane lore of dynamic html. Suddenly, my pages came alive! They could respond in different ways to my inputs! So, what did I do? I wrote a simple JavaScript game... What are High School students doing Now?For examples of excellence, there is just one place to look: ThinkQuest! The top prizes for this competition are high, so it attracts some exceptionally talented students. The semi-finalists were announced in September. So, if you want to see over 150 exceptional student websites... True interactivity is becoming a reality... The many routes to interactivity...I can think of five sets of tools you can use to create interactivity on the internet. Each has its own costs and benefits. Examine them. Decide which route you would like to explore further: |